darren russell hayman is an english singer-songwriter and guitarist. he is best known as the lead singer and guitarist in hefner. since they disbanded in 2002, hayman has embarked on a solo career and has released five albums.

minotaur shock is the nom de plume of david edwards, a bristol-based electronica musician. his critically lauded 2005 album maritime was his first album released through 4ad records, having previously released work via manchester based melodic.

he also plays drums in bronze age fox a band from the hanham area of bristol.

alex Ward is a london based musician who specialises in clarinet, guitar and voice. working variously in improvisation, composed material (mostly his own, but sometimes other people's), songs, and various combinations of the above.

weasel walter is a composer and instrumentalist who founded the band the flying luttenbachers in chicago in 1991. over the years the flying luttenbachers created an uncompromising and mercurial body of abstract music drawing equally from no wave, death metal, free jazz, gamelan, noise music, hardcore punk and modern classical. amongst other things, walter is the current drummer for experimental metal band behold...the arctopus.

rozi grew up in winchester and then she moved to bristol. she released her debut album inside over here on fence records and is recording a second one as we speak. literally as we speak. lets keep speaking until she finishes it...

on their deep and dark missions into rhythm and sound, through the use of drums, percussion and raw electronics, rocketnumbernine invite you to join them into the lesser explored musical territories. brothers ben and tom page have worked together musically for the last 8 years. through theirrichly varied musical experiences, the brothers conjure intense musical landscapes, with purely improvised sets allowing the music to follow its own course.

born in 1979 in bournemouth, dorset. started directorsound in 1998 while studying in colchester. moved to london for a while before settling back to dorset by 2002 and been there since. now residing in sunny bournemouth. releaseddebut "redemptive strikes" 2003 on geographic and felicity in japan. then collected the earlier recordings for "tales from the tightrope vol.1" released by dorset paeans, then powershovel audio in Japan. the new directorsound album "two years today" was released by tona serenad in 2010.

hannah is a musician, composer and musical director who trained at liverpool institute for performing arts. she loves exploring found instruments like rusty pianos and violins and is particularly found of music boxes which she samples and loops into her music.

domestic folk-tronic ambience... with balls. bristol based, but midland born jilk fuses a bewildering collage of home-found sounds with the ambient sounds capes of washy synths, insect-like clicks & cuts, and basslines to get any heads bobbing.

they sleep in oysters. they are a girl and a boy from paisley and reading. this music is an electronic vernacular in popular song form – it is their imagination and honesty. they record at home and play live in other places, making the sounds with computers, voices, toys, glockenspiel, banjo, accordion, ukulele, old keyboards and other electronic machines.

amy's ghost are a band from Reading fronted by singer/songwriter amy barton. risen from the ashes of her former band ‘wire jesus’ and allowed to run wild, she defines herself even more in style, more dramatic and fiery than before. their emotionally charged and highly visual live shows leave you open mouthed and sensually violated.

dolly dolly has been described by jonny mugwump of resonance fm as 'the aural equivalent of tony hancock and jackanory presented by edward gorey' and by the poet af harrold as a 'mysterious musical monolith of infinite variety, versatility and vision'.

islet are liquid, rotating between instruments, singing, howling. drum-duo breakdowns, splashes of guitar, searing organs. crossing the danceable electro-wash of gang gang dance and the careful racket of no-wave, the dulcet harmonies of os mutantes and the rhythmic noisiness of can. playing music for the joy of the moment.

formally bass player in the now defunct post-rock band the big sleep. joe is a one man death rattle guitar drone. dirty swells & rapturous noise.

"a delightfully unsignposted and roadless musical landscape, as huge industrial-sized clouds of sound engulf and intoxicate. talk about sonic catering, this music was achieved on the musical equivalent of an old secondary school canteen stove, participants enjoying a hearty pudding at music’s end. essential to all you inner space cadets" - JULIAN COPE

martin phone, john q microwave, and david f sandwich form a pulsing living electronic threesome performing works better associated with ebbs & flows, fields of barley, and glass cello. it sounds like aliens landing on Earth and having sex.

south london trio poino first knocked notes in 2006. since then they havecontinued to reveal their musical abstractions in venues across theeuropean landscape. a term of subterranean recording in the early monthsof 2010 has borne fruit to their self-realised debut album 'Moan Loose'.combining erudite proficiency with flailing ignorance they offer up amelee of caustic ambiguity from within the deepest hollows of adisenchanted consciousness. whatever the hell that means.

now firmly settled on the local music scene. it does not matter who or what previous bands they have been in. they deal in very sassy and clever uk country/folk. somewhere in the same ball park as sparklehorse, lambchop, modest mouse and low.

using only drums and processed cassettes, and incorporating many elements of avant-garde music and sound art in their realisation, sly & the family drone are a primal orchestra of drum rhythms, radiophonic oscillator noise and electronically-abstracted vocals. they forge hypnotic, textural workouts in the vein of black dice, shit & shine and crash worship.

tilehurst childrens arkestra let the music do the talking. formed by five alumni of denefield School in tilehurst after jamming together for a number of years, the arkestra have been gigging some of reading's more illustrious venues (south street, the rising sun arts centre, global cafe, etc) since 2007 as well as throwing in the odd jaunt to london, hamburg, and bracknell for good measure. their powerful sound is as equally informed by teenage obsessions with metal, indie rock, and rap music as it is by their more mature tastes in krautrock, jazz, and progressive rock - a heady mixture that the band strip down to it's brass tacks, producing short, sharp, precise bursts of songs without the endless "faffing about" connected with many of these genres.

super smashing boy boy indie rock duo comprised of local legends mark knight and ben hall - both formally of local post-rock band the big sleep. wild swimmers play stripped back noisy indie rock, that can go from quiet to loud in a blink of an eye.